The back­lash that Re­pub­lic­ans are ex­per­i­en­cing on their pro­posed Amer­ic­an Health Care Act is very real and should be wor­ri­some to the GOP. But the fal­lout from Pres­id­ent Trump’s pro­posed budget cuts could cause even great­er re­ver­ber­a­tions. Waste, fraud, and ab­use clearly ex­ist in gov­ern­ment spend­ing. But it’s also true that most spend­ing pro­grams ex­ist be­cause a lot of people wanted them, or be­cause they were per­ceived as im­port­ant pri­or­it­ies, pop­u­lar or not.

Con­sider the State De­part­ment. Early on, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion pro­posed to cut the State De­part­ment’s budget by as much as 37 per­cent, roughly $50 bil­lion. The num­ber now seems to be 28 per­cent—I sus­pect after Sec­ret­ary of State Rex Tiller­son ap­pealed to Pres­id­ent Trump to soften the blow. But the con­sequences would still be very real. When De­fense Sec­ret­ary James Mat­tis was a four-star gen­er­al head­ing up the U.S. Cent­ral Com­mand, he once test­i­fied be­fore Con­gress that, “If you don’t fund the State De­part­ment fully, then I need to buy more am­muni­tion ul­ti­mately.”

De­pend­ing on who is count­ing and how, there are between 178 and 196 coun­tries in the world, of which 35 are mem­bers of the Or­gan­iz­a­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co­oper­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment. The OECD is ba­sic­ally the Par­is-based club for highly de­veloped and free coun­tries with a mis­sion to im­prove the eco­nom­ic and so­cial well-be­ing of people around the world. Most of the OECD mem­ber coun­tries are European, but it also in­cludes Aus­tralia, Canada, Chile, Ice­land, Is­rael, Mex­ico, New Zea­l­and, South Korea, Ja­pan, and the United States.

At the oth­er end of the spec­trum are failed or fra­gile states. The U.S.-based Fund for Peace and For­eign Policy magazine an­nu­ally pub­lish a rank­ing of coun­tries based on a dozen factors, in­clud­ing the sta­bil­ity of the cent­ral gov­ern­ment, the strength of the eco­nomy, the qual­ity of pub­lic ser­vices, and levels of crimin­al­ity and cor­rup­tion. In 2016, the Fra­gile States In­dex lis­ted eight coun­tries as on “Very High Alert,” a gen­teel term for bas­ket cases: Somalia, South Su­dan, Cent­ral Afric­an Re­pub­lic, Su­dan, Ye­men, Syr­ia, Chad, and the Demo­crat­ic Re­pub­lic of the Congo. An­oth­er eight coun­tries were put on “High Alert:” Afgh­anistan, Haiti, Ir­aq, Guinea, Ni­ger­ia, Pakistan, Bur­undi, and Zi­m­b­ab­we. Still an­oth­er 21 were on “Alert” status, and 28 more on “High Warn­ing.” Not in­cluded are Taiwan, the Palestini­an Ter­rit­or­ies, North­ern Cyprus, Kosovo, and West­ern Saha­ra be­cause of their less than uni­ver­sally re­cog­nized sov­er­eignty.

The “Very High Alert” and “High Alert” cat­egor­ies are ef­fect­ively a list of coun­tries that are con­trib­ut­ing greatly to the world’s woes, wheth­er be­cause of their polit­ic­al in­stabil­ity and cor­rup­tion, or levels of poverty, dis­ease, and fam­ine. Their gov­ern­ing, eco­nom­ic, and so­cial prob­lems ul­ti­mately be­come our na­tion­al se­cur­ity prob­lems. The United Na­tions Refugee Agency es­tim­ated in 2015 that 65.3 mil­lion people were for­cibly dis­placed from their homes. Of those, 21.3 mil­lion are clas­si­fied as refugees, and 10 mil­lion as state­less. Those num­bers are likely worse today. Fifty-three per­cent came from just three coun­tries: Somalia, Afgh­anistan, and Syr­ia. The coun­tries with the most refugees were Tur­key, Pakistan, Le­ban­on, Ir­an, Ethiopia, and Jordan. The con­flicts over refugees and the res­ult­ing im­mig­ra­tion prob­lems are cas­cad­ing around the world.

Next, think about what we spend on de­fense. The Peter G. Peterson Found­a­tion, us­ing fig­ures from the Stock­holm In­ter­na­tion­al Peace Re­search In­sti­tute, es­tim­ated that in 2004 the U.S. spent $610 bil­lion on de­fense, more than the next sev­en coun­tries com­bined. De­fense spend­ing by the U.S. rep­res­en­ted 34 per­cent of all de­fense spend­ing world­wide, three times more than China’s $216 bil­lion and Rus­sia’s $84.5 bil­lion.

While the U.S. does rank No. 1 in for­eign aid in ab­so­lute terms, with Ger­many, France, and Bri­tain com­ing next, the total rep­res­ents less than 1 per­cent of the fed­er­al budget. Five years ago, one study found that the U.S. spent less than a fifth of 1 per­cent (.19 per­cent) of its gross na­tion­al in­come on de­vel­op­ment as­sist­ance, rank­ing 19th in the world, less than over half of the oth­er OECD na­tions. Bri­tain spent twice what Amer­ica did as a pro­por­tion of its eco­nomy.

Very simply put, cut­ting State De­part­ment fund­ing in gen­er­al and for­eign as­sist­ance in par­tic­u­lar is penny-wise, pound-fool­ish. It is a guar­an­tee that we will have to spend an as­tro­nom­ic­al share of our na­tion­al eco­nomy on de­fense in the fu­ture. Help­ing fes­ter­ing coun­tries re­solve their prob­lems ul­ti­mately helps us and our al­lies, so that maybe a dec­ade or two from now, we won’t have to spend quite so much on de­fense.

The Fed has raised rates another quarter point, to a target rate of 1.25 percent to 1.5 percent. Two members dissented in favor of keeping rates stable. As of this moment, they expect to make three more quarter-point hikes in 2018, and two in 2019. This meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee was Janet Yellen's last as chair.

At a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee today, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said "there's nothing inappropriate about FBI officials on special counsel Robert Mueller's team holding political opinions so long as it doesn't affect their work." Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said recently disclosed texts among former members of Mueller's team, "which were turned over to the panel Tuesday night by the Justice Department, revealed 'extreme bias.'"